Leon High School Speech Team
Charter Member of the National Forensic League
National Forensics League recognizes Leon HS as a Charter Member
On January 18, 2013 the Leon High School Speech Team was recognized as a Charter Chapter Member of the National Forensic League (NFL).
According to the NFL handbook, “Charter chapters are the highest school membership honor in the league. A school is automatically chartered:
· Once it has been a provisional member for at least one year; and
· Has met the minimum strength requirement of 50 new members/degrees enrolled over three years (or, for schools with grades 9-12 enrollment of less than 500 students, 25 new members/degrees).”
The National Forensic League is akin to UIL Academics. Two of the major differences between NFL and UIL are that NFL specializes in only debate and speaking events and NFL promotes competition between small, medium, and large schools.
Leon High School is now a full member of the UIL NFL District. Generally speaking, our district includes schools east of Dallas to Longview and goes as far south as Leon and Lufkin.
This is a difficult feat to accomplish and maintain as a small school. You can count the number of 1A schools in the state of Texas that are active charter chapters on two hands. Almost all of whom could be found competing at the UIL Academic State Meet.
Leon High School has a great speech team whose talents are well balanced. We are fortunate to have students who have excelled in debate, oral interpretation, and extemporaneous speaking.
Participating in speech and debate is similar to track and field. Much of our competition is based on each person’s individual performance. That also means that not everyone comes home from a tournament with a medal in their hand. So it is certainly exciting when we are able to accomplish things like this altogether. The students (past and present) listed on the charter represent the students earning at least one NFL degree at the time of charter recognition.
Charter Chapter Members
Harpreet Kaur
Shelby Stricklin
Cody Garcia
Brooke Hastings
Brittany Moran
Jordan Stricklin
Becky Mata
Drew Neyland
Maranda Bailey
Karla Cerda
Brianna Sitton
Megan Mason
Weston Prior